Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

So you think it might be 70. The minister said it might be $70 billion. I think that is probably closer to it, and I am glad we have got an acknowledgement that that is a possibility.

Let us get this off to the Productivity Commission. The opposition is happy to be proved wrong if the Productivity Commission comes back and says, ‘This business case stacks up.’ I will be the first one to stand up in this place and say that my nervousness and the nervousness of the business community, the banking community and everyone else was wrong. I will be happy to admit it if we are wrong. But I tell you what, we are not going to let you get away with expenditure of this nature on the back of a 36-page summary of a business case, which, as Senator Joyce said, said absolutely nothing at all. If you think it is appropriate to spend that amount of money and sign not just this generation but generation after generation up to this sort of expenditure then it is a gross abrogation of your responsibilities as a minister and a gross abrogation of the responsibilities of the Prime Minister to this country.

Get it off to the Productivity Commission and let the Productivity Commission make a value judgment about it. Then come back into this chamber and tell us what they said about it. Why you are afraid, Minister, and why Prime Minister Gillard is afraid to put this to the ultimate test is because it is about politics and the pull-through that the Prime Minister got last night from your colleagues, Minister—some 20, apparently, who spoke on this—when they said to her, ‘You do not have a program for this government and you have lost your way.’ These were your own colleagues telling the Prime Minister, and there is no indication to date that anything is going to change.

This is a political fix. This not a broadband fix; this is a political fix. And the fact that you have dragged the two Independents into this political fix is one of the most disappointing aspects. I have great regard for both of them but, quite frankly, I think they have been conned by you, your government and the Prime Minister into supporting this dramatic expenditure of taxpayers’ funds. (Time expired)